


The Life And The Suffering Of Lucius Malfoy

by Ceies



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-War, Angst, Azkaban, Drama, Family Bonding, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Lucius Malfoy-centric, Malfoy Family Feels (Harry Potter), One Shot Collection, Post-Canon, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Malfoy's love each other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23133751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceies/pseuds/Ceies
Summary: Twice, he lost this war, twice, he survived that tyrant. But even still, life goes on.A One-Shot Collection showing different moments in the Life of Lucius Malfoy, focusing on his time after the war.
Relationships: Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy, Draco Malfoy & Lucius Malfoy & Narcissa Black Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy & Scorpius Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy & Severus Snape, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy
Kudos: 20





	1. The Peacock

**Author's Note:**

> When I first started writing Fanfiction, I very quickly found my home in that small little corner of the Harry Potter Fandom that is Lucius Malfoy post-war-fics. My first big projects were all about that, but of course, in German. When I first forayed through the endless archives of English Fanfiction I tried myself at translating other autors' stuff into German, and then my own stuff into Engish - and neither really worked.
> 
> Now, I have a bit more experience in writing in English, so I thought to give it one more attempt.  
> This is a One Shot Collection that I first started writing in German around 3 1/2 years ago. It was my contribution to a project called "50 questions for your character" and I decided to pick Lucius Malfoy. Ultimately I didn't manage to answer all the questions, as some just didn't fit into the magical world, others didn't fit to Lucius, and again others were actually perfectly suited to write a Lucius-OS about, but I still didn't find the right inspiration. In the end, I managed to do about half of the questions, and not all of these OS were particularly good. However, some of them I am still incredibly proud of, so I decided to try and translate them into English to firstly practice translating, and secondly, hope some of you may like them as much as I do.
> 
> I don't realy know yet, how many of those OS I will end up translating, but they are only loosly connected, with some standing entirely on their own, other's being grouped together and so on...
> 
> For the purpose of this story, I decided to not use the questions as chapter titles, as I had in the German version, because those questions are sometimes ridiculously long. But I'll roughly translate the question in the author's note at the end of each chapter, so you can tell me, how you liked my answer to it, and maybe how you would have answered. Also, these OS are in no chronological order.
> 
> That said: TRIGGER WARNINGS: for Angst, depression, depiction of violence (though I don't think it will be that graphic) and torture (though mostly just mentioned)
> 
> Just as a general warning, these One Shots can range from incredibly dark to very hopeful and everything in between. I just like to chip the layers away from my characters, and leave them naked and vulnerable, if you understand what I mean.
> 
> Also if somebody wants to Beta this story... I'd be very thankful!

He looked outside the window. The park, that was his front yard, laid empty before his eyes. Sometimes he wondered if he should order the house elves to plant something here, apart from the plain grass and neatly cut hedges. Then again, he was never a friend of roses. He didn’t spend much time in his gardens, but whenever he was there, he didn’t want to ruin his clothes, ripping them through thorns. Never mind that grand elaborate gardens were not just expensive but also meant a lot of work.

The house-elves would only use it as an excuse to work less in the house. They already complained, that there was too much work. Not to him of course – never to him, but whenever he wasn’t around or when they thought he didn’t listen, they started mouthing off about the working pressure. He didn’t want to hand them one more excuse to do even less in the house.

Thus, added to the new flowers, he’d also have to buy a new house-elf – and those were hard to come by these days – or he’d have to employ a gardener… who on the other hand he’d have to pay. In the long run, a house-elf would be cheaper. And more capable! At least they hadn’t had the idea to ask for insurances and structure themselves into unions to demand better treatment or more money, just for doing the work they were hired to do in the first place. If he had bad luck a human employee would even demand to get a doxy-bite-vaccination paid. And if Lucius didn’t want to follow these safety precautions, he was sure one Arthur Weasley would gladly use that pathetic pretense, to issue one of his obnoxious house searches. No, no, he’d rather stick to house-elves where the ministry did not have a great catalog of rules and regulations on how to treat them

Again, he glanced through the window. Anyway, rosebushes – and in general just about any fair flowery plant – were not the right thing for him. He didn’t have anything against that briary, but any halfway capable – or wealthy – Muggle could put some greenery into their gardens. He was a Malfoy and his gardens had to represent that.

A few years ago, he had entertained the idea of keeping swans in the lake behind the manor. When he was still young, every now and then wild geese had settled there for a season before moving on. Pesky migrating birds. It hardly helped to shush them away, they’d return the next year, anyway! Swans, he had thought, would maybe dampen the mood for those ugly ducks. It had never evolved into more than just a vague idea. He had never done it. Mostly because swans were quite aggressive when you closed in on them during the wrong time of the year – and Lucius preferred to have access to his lake all year round. He didn’t swim, but he liked to sit at the shore – not least of all because that was where he had asked Narcissa to marry him. This was a part of his gardens that he didn’t want to share with swimming poultry, no matter how beautiful it was.

Still, the swans had inspired another idea. Peacocks. Peacocks, those were truly magnificent creatures. When he was a child and less intimidating than he was now, his classmates had sometimes called him a “strutting peacock” and they had probably thought he should take it as an insult. Maybe they had never seen a peacock before. Why would anybody feel insulted for being compared to those most wonderous of all birds? There was nothing insulting there. Peacocks where beautiful animals – he had never heard anybody proclaim otherwise. He liked peacocks. They were like him.

And surely, he was not just an ordinary peacock. He was a pureblood, thus only the purest peacock should live in his gardens. On the spur of the moment and without a second thought he took out his quill and a scroll of parchment.

Three days later the majestic bird arrived at the manor. White was his gown. Bright Silver like the hair on a Malfoy’s head. A magnificent animal. Purity was a beauty. A bird made for the Malfoy patriarch, the seller proclaimed. And he was right of course. Mephistopheles was his name, but Lucius could change it anytime if he wanted to, he was told. The Malfoy had only smirked and kept the name. The name of the devil. A bit of self-irony was never a bad thing. It would remain a secret between himself and the bird, after all.


	2. Malfoy Manor

Although hardly anything changed, the gardens looked a lot better with a bit of life in them. Shortly after Mephistopheles moved in, they added a few female companions and soon after wherever you went on the extensive premises there would always be a white shimmering peacock close by. It was the bit he added to the house and the property of Malfoy Manor. His personal flair. The rest he had inherited from his father, and his father’s father and his father before him. One thousand years of Malfoy history had left their mark on this property to a point that it became difficult to add your own personal tone to it to make it homely. In any case, Lucius had never been the sentimental type. He had left the Manor as it was. Even the fact, that the birds had been his personal addition to it… he had only become aware of that many years later.

The Dark Lord moved onto the Manor. And shortly after, privacy and personality vanished from the inside. It wasn’t just the pictures of Draco’s childhood, their marriage- and family portraits that vanished from the salon and the more public rooms, but even the old paintings of his ancestors long past, the furniture, even the carpets. The great divan his father had bought almost forty years ago, went up in a bright flame of fire, falling victim to the Dark Lord's fury. His ancestors fled from their portraits even before the Dark Lord demanded the empty frames to be thrown out. Lucius’ choice selection of the most splendid wine was by order of the Dark Lord removed from his cellars to make space for the dungeons. Many things vanished into the furthest most remote chambers of the manor that transformed into storage rooms bursting at the seams. Other things vanished forever – through the Dark Lord, through Bellatrix, through Nagini, through the other death eaters. Even his owls didn’t last long, the longer the great snake lived in the manor. It wasn’t long before the Dark Lord also took over the other rooms of the manor, the upper corridors, the guest rooms, the bathrooms, the great halls… and finally even their personal chambers, Draco’s rooms. At some point, Lucius remained only a guest in his own home, that’s how it seemed. That’s how he felt. 

Worse than the furniture and the portraits and the carpets that vanished, fared only the furniture, and the portraits and the carpets that remained. The long dining table, that his great grandfather Septimus had received in a rather shady manner, and on which Lucius now sat through permanent humiliation and ridicule… he could hardly look at it anymore. The same for the carpets upon which the Dark Lord tortured him and his family whenever he saw a reason for it, maybe because he was in a bad mood or felt insulted or deemed Lucius’ failure worthy of more punishment. The carpets upon which Draco was forced to torture death eaters with the Cruciatus… Even the chandelier that had helped Potter flee…

The peacocks remained. 

The Dark Lord didn’t seem to care about them. After all, they weren’t in the house and he hardly walked the gardens. He also didn’t know, didn’t see, didn’t realize how much Lucius' heart had latched onto those birds, that with every vanished memorabilia, every stained furniture, every dead owl turned more and more into his anchor. It was proof that this was – still, after all, after everything – his house and he was not just a guest… or a prisoner. This was his. All of it. As far as the eye could see from the window of the room, he and Narcissa had been resettled in. 

The Dark Lord did not know about the sentimentalities of his follower, maybe he didn’t understand it, but he left the peacocks alone. Even Nagini seemed satisfied with the owls waiting in the owlery like on a silver platter, instead of turning away from her master for long enough to hunt the peacocks in the gardens. 

After all, the peacocks were like him – they survived.

When the Dark Lord finally died, Lucius and Narcissa destroyed the dining table, burned the old carpet to charcoal, he would have liked to rip the chimney out, if it hadn’t been nailed down.

After their trials were over, they all lived in the manor again, Narcissa, and Draco, and he. But the manor wasn’t the same. It was as if there was still his blood on the walls. Narcissa’s blood sticky on the furniture, Draco’s smearing over the floorboards and the tiles… For years it stank of the Dark Lord.

They brought the old furniture back from the basement and the storage rooms, they put his wine back into the cellars, the portraits and family pictures back onto the walls… but still, his stench hung in the air. He reattached the great family crest back at its ancestral place over the chimney in the salon where the Dark Lord had humiliated him and his family, where he had snapped his wand in front of all of his followers. But still…

Whenever he needed to make sure, that this was his house, really his, no matter the stench and the blood he saw everywhere, it wasn’t the crest he looked at. He only needed the birds. Their noble beauty in the gardens and he knew, that this was everything he had ever changed about the house. This was the one thing that was ever truly his personal flair. And that was all he needed, he didn’t need to add more to the manor.

The years passed and then, finally, the stench vanished. New pictures and paintings entered the house. Draco’s graduation, Draco’s wedding, Scorpius’ birth…

Sometimes he could hear his grandson’s laughter echoing from the walls when he sat in his office, and when Scorpius believed his strict Grandpa to be far enough away not to hear it when he slid down the banisters of the grand staircase. 

One day Draco planted a peach tree right in front of the dining hall. Lucius assumed it had been Astoria’s idea, but he liked looking down from his office window on the first floor and watch the tree grow. The peacocks seemed to like it, too, and he wondered if maybe in few years when Lucius was long dead, Draco would sit in this same room look out of this same window, see the peach tree and remember that this was still his house, even if Scorpius’ wedding pictures already decorated the chimney.

It was on this day, when that thought crossed his mind, that he left his office and the stench of the Dark Lord was finally gone. Where Draco’s blood had stained the floor, there was now a Persian carpet, that Astoria and Narcissa had chosen together. Where Narcissa’s blood had stuck to the furniture there was now new furniture laden with pictures of Draco and Astoria, of Scorpius, of Narcissa and Lucius, of Astoria’s family. And where his blood had been smeared across the walls there was now his family crest again, the Malfoy’s family tree, the portraits of his ancestors and one of Astoria’s grandfather.

Malfoy Manor had lasted through the centuries. One thousand years of Malfoy generations that had lived and died here and the manor had never forgotten any of them. The Dark Lord it had forgotten. Finally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The question for this OS was:  
> If you could build a house - no matter what kind of house - what would it look like? What would be unique about it?

**Author's Note:**

> So, the question for this chapter was:  
> If your character were an animal, what would he be?
> 
> I decided to go for peacock. It fits his character perfectly, and we know that in canon he has some of them. In the magical world, I think this question has an added layer because it often (though not always) corresponds with the question of what would be the Patronus. I know, not everybody's Patronus represents themselves (as Harry's represents his Dad, and Severus' does Lily) but I feel like Lucius' Patronus would be a paecock too. And just imagine how amazing that would be: Not just does Lucius have ALBINO peacocks, so his Patronus with its silvery white color would look exactly like his actual pet peacocks, but imagine you have a peacock patronus, between yourself and a bunch of dementors. It's just a bird, but then it beats its wheel, and it's like a physical shield between yourself and the dementors.


End file.
